Monday, September 30, 2013

The latest Publishing Rules on Mizozo

With these new changes in our Registration policy, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit our Publishing Rules one more time.

In short, nothing has really changed. The rules are simple:

  • No Porn
  • No Spam
  • At least 50% original content
  • Don't Break Copyrights
  • No Hate

That last bit is new, the No Hate, but the other four are pretty much the ways it’s been all along, so I don’t think it’s necessary to go over them. They’re pretty self-explanatory, but if you need them explained you probably shouldn't be writing for Mizozo in the first place.

The No Hate bit is a bit touchy. While I see nothing wrong with a little disagreement, some stereotyping, or even some bashing of ethnic groups or ideologies, calling for acts of violence or just shear verbal abuse is where I draw the line. This is a slippery slope, and thus far there has only been one instance where something was considered “hateful”, but seeing how it’s already happened once it is likely to happen again, and I have no intention of allowing Mizozo to become some bastion to hate other people.

So, once again, not much has changed, but now we are explicitly denying any story (or comment) that is incredibly hateful.

A change in Registration Policy

After a great deal of thought, I have decided to change the way we allow people to register on Mizozo. While there are a few reasons for this, the predominant one is the way in which SEO companies are utilizing our free service.

Let me be clear on one thing, nothing is changing within the site for any of our already registered, non SEO members. The site will function exactly the same, and will continue to do so until our eventual transition to WordPress. The WordPress transition will likely change much within Mizozo, but that will be discussed another day. Those who wish to register as publishers on Mizozo will now need to provide a little more information in order for their accounts to be created and we will not be registering everyone, we plan to be significantly more selective.

Why is this happening? 

I am of the opinion that Mizozo must be a free platform, allowing all those who wish to contribute to do so virtually without restriction (except for Porn, Spam and Hate). Over the last year, an incredibly large number of SEO companies began registering on the site. In the last 4 months alone we have had over 50 new SEO users, but I suspect that there are probably only 3 or 4 actual individuals simply making numerous accounts. This wouldn’t be a problem if the content was at least decent.

To compound the problem, the companies hiring these SEO companies have begun harassing me to take down the articles pointing to their site, adding to my workload. It seems that some of them aren’t fond of the writing style, which makes sense, but more importantly Google has changed the way it handles links, making these types of link building articles more a penalty for the sites than a benefit, something I think is a great move.

In short, these SEO companies have forced me to rethink the way I handle new registrants. So, from this day forward all new applicants will need to submit a bit of personal information on who they are and why they want to contribute articles to Mizozo. Now, this personal information doesn’t actually need to be real, you can make up whatever you want, but one thing that will need to be real is some form of Social presence. This could be a Facebook account, Twitter, Reddit, or whatever, but the accounts must be at least 6 months in existence. Also, all applications submitted to Mizozo will become public. I will be creating a new spreadsheet in Google Docs which will detail all applications and their approval status. This document will be made public, with a link on Mizozo.com and a second link here on the blog.

I will be updating our Registration Information page will more specific instructions on what will be expected of all applicants, but in short it will be at least the following:

  • Full Name
  • Website (Optional)
  • Icon or Image (Optional)
  • List of Social Networks at least 6 months old
  • Up to two previously posted articles
  • A little about yourself
  • Why you want to write for Mizozo
  • Do you have SEO intentions (crucial)

Upon receiving an application, I will immediately update the public spreadsheet and begin looking it over. Once a decision is made, the row in the spreadsheet will be updated and the applicant will be notified.

While the note about yourself and reason for writing isn’t all that important, and neither are the links to previous work, the social network is key. This will be checked, and if the user is less than 6 months old they will not be eligible. The hope is that this will eliminate SEO companies from simply creating a Facebook account for the sole purpose of registering on Mizozo. Also, an established user will give us a sense of who the person is, meaning is the applicant a real user or just someone posing. Hopefully, this will stem the incessant SEO registrants, and keep the companies hiring them from contacting me with requests to remove old posts. That last note, do you have any intention to write SEO articles, is also crucial. I have no problem with SEO publishers, they will simply be reviewed more stringently. If they intend to promote their own sites, great, I am all for it. If they are an SEO company that writes decent content, great. If they intend to place sponsored links ‘occasionally’ in their posts, also great. However, if their sole intent is to write SEO articles for various clients and their articles are crap, they will be denied.

Another interesting note is that I have tried to identify existing SEO users within the system. While there is no physical mark anywhere on a user’s account on whether or not they have been labeled SEO, one easy way to tell is to post a new story. If their new article goes to the Homepage’s Recent Story List, they are fine. If they don’t see it there, they should check the SEO Page. If they are there, they are SEO. Now, in order to reduce the number of active SEO users on the site, one other change will be implemented. In 3 months a culling of users will occur. All users that haven’t logged into their account in at least 6 months will be deactivated. I will take a look at the articles posted by the user before deactivation, and if I feel that their articles are halfway decent I will not deactivate the user, but if they write crap they’re gone.

Again, this will not affect any of the real writers on Mizozo in the least, nor will it hinder any new ones from joining. We encourage people to register on Mizozo to publish their content, and will do our best to help promote it. If you are looking for a place to post your opinion on global matters, share your latest internet finds, or just look around for great content, Mizozo is your place.

Join Mizozo, Join the Revolution!

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Apparently its illegal to post facts online, or so some random lawyer seems to believe

For the first time, I have received a Takedown Notice not by a copyright clown, but by a lawyer, or so the man seems to claim. The email comes from someone at lawyer.com, but this means little. The most interesting bit is the content of the email:


Sir,

I want to bring your concern to a very serious matter . The article " http://www.mizozo.com/weird/03/2010/05/banned-from-flying-man-banned-from-flying-for-mast....html " published by the website "http://www.mizozo.com" published by you contains the content that is defacing my Client's reputation and affecting his Business and Social Life in a negative manner.

Due to this content the following laws has been violated by your website :

According to Article 17 of the United Nations International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states:


1.  No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation.

 2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

 Basis of Liability for Cyberlibel


 a) Distributor/Publisher Characterizations: One of the most important issues in cyber libel is whether the online service providers, operators of bulletin boards or website owners are common carriers, distributors or publishers.

 b) Publishers, such as newspapers, magazines and broadcasters, are responsible and liable for everything that they produce, post and broadcast. Their liability is grounded in the fact that they can edit what they wish to include and exclude from their publication, be it a newspaper, magazine, television broadcast, website or newsgroup.


 As the ADMIN of the website "http://www.mizozo.com" you have the privilege to remove the reported links.  So I demand you to remove the concerned article or else we will take the required legal action .


Yours Sincerely



Now, I am far from an unreasonable man, and I understand that people do stupid things. Mistakes need not last forever in the infamy of the internet, but ... that's kind of how the internet works. Once an article hits the internet, it is permanent in many ways. There are countless organizations out there that store snapshots of the internet (http://archive.org for example), so even if you can convince someone to remove a post, they are still there.

More so, Mizozo employs a various assortment of outside sites to help push our content (Facebook, Twitter, etc), all of which have a snapshot of the article. Getting us to remove something doesn't really help because it has already been posted elsewhere.

Now, if someone was to post something libelous, slanderous or even wrong factually, this would be one thing. But, in this case, I can find plenty of evidence that the man in the article in question did in fact do what he said he did, so there is nothing I can do.

In short, if you find something on Mizozo that you don't like, rather than being aggressive about it, its best to ask nicely. I can't promise that I will remove it, but I will at least consider it. In this case, however, there is little chance.

BTW, for those curious as to how I responded, here's the text (I oppologize in advance for its poor grammar and not well thought through sentence structure. It was written in haste without much thought).

Hi there.
To the best of my knowledge, reporting on facts is covered in a wide variety of US laws, not least of which is free speech. More so, the event you are referring to is also being reported on by a number of reputable agencies, hence its validity as fact can not be dismissed. In so, if someone doesn't want to be called out on stupid things they have done in their past, the best way to go about this is by refraining from doing said stupid things, rather than make idle threats.
It would be one thing if you asked politely for me to take down the article, at which point I may or may not have done so. However, when you become threatening, the last thing I will do is relent. So, in short, sorry, I can't help you.

Monday, September 2, 2013

Mizozo's August Numbers

Due to the holidays, this post will be short. For a more complete traffic breakdown, check out the Analytics numbers.

Otherwise, here's a brief summary:

Visitors: 120,325
Page Views: 191,632
Pages Per View: 1.59 
Earnings: $260

Note: earnings will be a touch higher due to a new campaign we implemented that I don't have reports on yet.

The Winner of the Contour Roam Prize Package is ...



As many of you know, August's prize was the Contour Roam package. While this is unfortunately our last prize for some time, it shouldn't detract from the jubilation of this particular event.

In the month of August, the most popular article published in August was Introducing Yaya Kosikova with her Topless Photoshoot for VAGA Magazine (NSFW), published  by celebuzz. Congratulations celebuzz on your incredible action camera, maybe you'll post some of your adventures on Mizozo?

Again, this is unfortunately our last prize for some time, but now we can concentrate on growing the site in different ways, so its not all bad.